


adorn me with a lighter burden

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [17]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, M/M, Pocstuck, porrim/signless (one-sided)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-02 23:40:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2830241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Porrim Maryam, and your last two years of high school are the strangest years of your life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	adorn me with a lighter burden

**Author's Note:**

> this is long as hell, have fun.
> 
> 4/25/16: i decided to edit this fic to use the human names i'd given to the teacher-ancestors.  
> so...
> 
> Dolores Martineau = The Dolorosa  
> Krishna Vandayar = The Signless  
> Masae Sakamoto = Mindfang  
> Yekaterina Levin = The Disciple  
> Simon Cao = The Psiioniic  
> Marisol Perez = Neophyte Redglare  
> Cecily Perlman = The Condesce

_"…I have not forgotten your worship / nor my sisters / nor the sons of my daughters / my children watch for your print / in their labors / and they say Aido Hwedo is coming."_  - Audre Lorde, Call.

You walk into your first day of AP US History not expecting much from the class. After all, it’s 9th period.

But it turns out that your teacher is a man with an afro, standing at the same height as you - 67 inches - with skin a few shades darker. The first thing he tells your class is that your assigned textbook is a lie crafted by white supremacy, like every other history textbook you’ve ever been given.

Seated across the room from each other, you and your best friend Kankri exchange amused, appreciative glances.

This is going to be an interesting year.

Your teacher, Mr. Vandayar, teaches to the syllabus with a grudging bent, always encouraging you to question, to think for yourselves, even if and when means challenging him.

“All of you are individuals, and all of you have thoughts worth sharing,” he insists.

During the unit about the start of the Atlantic slave trade, he rants about how slaves were robbed of their names and given anglicized ones, how their old religions were discarded, how their identities were torn away from them.

“This country was built on a foundation of cultural genocide,” he states one day.

Kankri thinks that this statement is so brilliant that he writes it down. On the train home, you two can’t help but marvel at your teacher and his audacity.

Tasked with an FRQ concerning the Seneca Falls convention, you end up writing an essay about how this represented a step forward for white feminism that left black women in the dust. Mr. Vandayar marks you down for not properly answering the actual question, but writes encouraging comments on your essay even so. You stay after class to discuss this with him, and end up ranting about the current, similar state of feminist theory today.

“Invariably, the voices of the privileged are always the loudest,” he says. “And all oppression is interconnected, a fact I am sure I do not have to tell a woman of color.”

“Right,” you agree. “Which is why, though I wish for women’s liberation, and the end of sex-based oppression, I won’t ever call myself a feminist.”

Later, he recommends extra reading for you. You’d already heard of bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker, but had never read their work in depth. You’d never heard of Audre Lorde, and her work turns out to resonate with you the most.

He recommends male authors as well - Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, and Paulo Freire.

Freire is one of the few non-black suggestions he gives, and he makes the recommendation enthusiastically.

After struggling through your library’s copy of  _Pedagogy of the Oppressed_ , some of the terminology and concepts heavy for even you, you contemplate incompleteness. How freedom is something one must fight for.

“Are you fighting for freedom?” you ask Mr. Vandayar one afternoon.

“I like to think so,” he replies. “Though I am also an actor in an oppressive system.”

During class, he has to call you Porrim. That’s the name on his attendance sheet. That’s the name you’ll put on your AP booklet in May. But in the hallways, on the sidewalk, when he passes you before first period, he murmurs, “Good morning, Akuba.”

When you parents call you by your name, it feels embarrassing and slightly antiquated. When friends like Kankri and Meenah (whom you call Yaaba in return) use it, it’s business as usual. When Mr. Vandayar says it, it feels a bit like a secret kept just between the two of you.

So you blush and stutter an appropriate greeting in response, flustered by this man.

Maybe it’s his accountability. Maybe it’s his approachability. Maybe it’s that he’s so young. Maybe it’s the fact that he is one of the first people who has taken what you have to say seriously, but you find yourself developing a crush on him.

You sing  _“Killing Me Softly”_  in an empty stairwell, thinking of him and what it must be like to date someone older and sophisticated and worldly, someone who shares your radical politics. In less interesting classes, namely precalculus, you daydream about it.

Meenah, who sits next to you in that class, teases you for your obvious infatuation. However, her jeers and jibes come in one of the languages of Ghana, something only the two of you speak. As annoying as she can be, she does this in order to keep your secret.

“He’d be good lookin’ if I actually rolled that way,” she comments, this time in English.

“Yaaba, we know you only have eyes for Miss Perez and Aranea,” you respond.

“Get with the times, Akuba, I’m over Serket. Gotta new girl on ma mind.”

You always try to stay up to date with who has a thing for whom. It’s one of your weaknesses.

“Oh, is that so? What’s she like?”

“She’s too glubbin serious for her own good. And too smart to be such a coddamn idiot.”

That rings absolutely no bells in terms of any of your mutual acquaintances, which is rather sad. You would have liked to be able to return her incessant taunting with some of your own.

Meenah and her penchant for riling people up just to watch the fallout. Meenah and her irreverence. Meenah, the self-professed “butchest lesbian in the school.”

Her regular attire consists of loose button-down shirts, tight jeans, black Nike dunks, and an impressive array of gold bracelets and rings. When she’s feeling fancy, she’ll wear men’s suits, always perfectly tailored.

Mituna nicknames her “Goldmember” sometime in November, after she gets two gold rings through her left eyebrow.

“Tuna-fish, do I look e-fin remotely fuckin’ Dutch to you?” she asks, cracking her knuckles.

“You love goooooooold,” he replies in that idiotic accent from the movie.

You have seen some dumb pretexts for physical fights, but this one takes the cake for stupidity.

Meenah straight up threatens to deck him headfirst into 2011 if he ever calls her Goldmember again, so naturally he does whenever he gets the chance. However, Latula politely requests that Meenah allow him to live, and Meenah almost always listens to pretty girls. Doesn’t stop her from  _threatening_  to kill him on the regular.

“The second she breaks up with him, his ass is dead,” she tells you.

Latula and Mituna have such an oddly perfect relationship that you are almost sure aforementioned separation will never take place, so you don’t worry about it too much.

Later, in a characteristic display of never knowing when to shut the fuck up, Kankri makes the suggestion that Meenah consider nonviolent solutions to her problems. She kindly offers to nonviolent a foot up his ass. Once you’re done trying not to laugh, you get her to concede that he probably isn’t worth the effort.

For the most part, she’s all bark and no bite. You two spend your time exchanging tawdry bits of gossip and bickering over who copied whom in terms of facial piercings. She has this knack for knowing about shit before it goes down that borders on prescience.

And you keep running into her on the 4 train platform, since you frequently linger after 9th to pick Mr. Vandayar's brain, frequently with Kankri, while Meenah stays after school for swim team. Generally worn out after practice, she falls asleep on your shoulder on the ride home like a kid, all pretenses of badassery stripped away. She’s adorable in this state, and you feel bad for having to shake her awake a few stops before yours. Even if her stop is right after.

“Yaaba, I gotta get off the train.”

“You’re lucky you’re reel cute, Porrim,” she mutters, half-asleep, terse, and red-eyed from the chlorine.

Your cheeks flush at this, something she manages to notice even in her lethargy.

“Oh my glub, I can’t e-fin with you sometimes,” she says, stifling a giggle.

You pout and cross your arms.

“Well, you’re the one who started it.”

You try to shove her in mock annoyance, but end up taking hold of her shoulder much more softly than you’d intended. Your blush intensifies. She blinks at you behind her tyrian-rimmed glasses, mouth open in a tremulous “o” shape.

“I could finish it too, if you wanted,” she murmurs, once she gets over the initial shock of your touch.

You think it’s one of her stupid little innuendos, but she isn’t laughing anymore. In fact, this may be the most serious you’ve seen her in years. When you don’t respond, she regards you with a wide fearful expression, the look of someone who is certain that they have completely fucked everything up.

Her statement hangs in the air until you stand and let go of her.

_“This is Nostrand Avenue…”_

You wave to her after you get off the train, as it starts to gather speed again. Oh god, you’re such an idiot.

Neither of you mentions this in math the next day, or the day after that, or on later train rides, or ever. But your old dynamic has been whacked a few degrees off balance. The jokes you try to make with each other sometimes drift away without punchlines. She catches you staring at her on the train platform. You pretend not to notice the way she looks at you during math.

You gather your thoughts carefully, weighing the pros and cons. Meenah’s attractive, in a wiry sort of way. Attractive, but oftentimes a pain in the ass. And a woman, to boot. Your family would most certainly kill you if they ever find out about this. But they won’t find out if you never make a move.

So you’ll stay just friends with her. That is the path of least resistance.

The awkwardness subsides after a week or two.

You and Meenah resume your usual shit-talking in Akan during eighth period precalc until Ms. Sakamoto threatens the both of you with detention for not speaking English.

“You could be saying all kinds of offensive things about me and your classmates, and we’d never know.”

This is very accurate.

Aware that you already have a few detentions outstanding from the time you got caught making out with Latula in an empty stairwell, you’re not particularly eager to earn any more. You then opt for passing notes instead.

Meanwhile, Aranea, ever the apple polisher, gives correct answer after correct answer. From the back of the class, Meenah occasionally lobs paper balls at the back of her head, usually hitting Damara in the process.

Before ninth begins, you and Kankri argue furiously over whether gender-based or race-based oppression is more salient in this day and age, eventually asking Mr. Vandayar what he thinks. He shrugs and refuses to answer.

In class, he talks about how the civil rights movement is incomplete, how the textbooks delineate these eras in such a clear-cut manner so that students see all of it as  _history_ , as things that happened in the past, as events that are  _over_.

“This society is trying to prevent each of you from understanding oppression,” he warns, writing dates down upon the board. “It crams you full of facts and rote memorization to keep you from true, meaningful analysis. So while I will grade your essays the way they will be graded on the AP exam, I will also point out when and where you fail to think critically about the world around you.”

Cronus accuses him of discriminating against white people.

“You talk about us like we’re the devil or some shit, man. Newsflash, dude, slavery wasn’t my fuckin’ fault,” he says.

You’re ready to punch him for such flagrant disrespect (you’ve frequently been on the verge of physically harming Cronus), but Mr. Vandayar is nonplussed. He doesn’t yell, or even give him detention. He simply lectures, in the careful, measured tone he’s reserved for disagreements in the classroom.

“While you may not have  _personally_  enslaved a single individual, you very likely benefit from slavery’s effects on an institutional level,” he states. “Such is the nature of white privilege. But if, during any of my lessons, I have made you feel personally attacked, I apologize. That was not my intent, though sometimes I get carried away.”

But you like it when he gets carried away. You like it when some fact, some date, some current event pushes him out of respectable instructor territory and into a more impassioned state of mind. Along with Ms. Perez, he’s one of the younger faculty members, and it’s easy to imagine him as an undergraduate, a man who spent his free time protesting with one dark fist raised.

You can take the activist out of the picket line but you can’t take the picket line out of the activist.

You find more reasons to stay after class. To help him wash the chalkboards. To photocopy handouts and staple them in the history department office while he grades essays. You need to ask him all the questions you have about the way the world and its injustices operate.

Behind her red glasses, Ms. Perez jokes that you’re practically his shadow, but occasionally listens to your questions and conclusions while she tweaks her mock trial lesson plans. She and Mr. Vandayar set you to filing copies of old exams.

“Do you think the system can be reformed, or does it need to be dismantled entirely?” you ask him.

It has to be coming up on 5:40 by now, but neither you nor he has left the building. Mr. Vandayar apparently lives within walking distance of the school, and you’re waiting for Meenah to text you to say that she’s out of practice so you don’t have to take the train alone.

He cards a thoughtful hand through his hair at that question, and doesn’t respond immediately. You figure he’s decided to ignore you altogether, but he finally speaks after an eternity, not looking at you, or at anything in particular.

“I think it’s something you’ll have to figure out for yourself.”

But the problem is that you can’t. Your answer flips so often that you can’t keep track. On good days, you think that maybe the status quo could be feasible with gradual, major changes. On other days, you just wish someone would burn the whole thing down.

You’d been sitting across from him at the smaller of the two tables in the office when you’d asked him that question. You chew on your lip piercing, twist one of your braids around your finger nervously, and tap a spot of wood on his side of the table to get his attention again.

“Well, what do you think, personally?” That’s a start, at the very least, a place of reference.

He sighs. “Does it really matter?”

That question feels loaded, as if he’s testing you somehow.

“Yes,” you confess. “To me.”

“It shouldn’t,” he states. “I want you to consider it. It would be simple for me to give you my point of view, and for you to adopt it as fact because I am your teacher. But that isn’t how I want you to learn. I want you to come to your own conclusions.”

You frown, and shrug your shoulders. “My conclusions keep changing, sir.”

“And that is the nature of learning,” he says, a faint smile on his face. “Flux. Change. Accommodating one’s views to fit new information. Contrary to what some would tell you, you aren’t supposed to have the answers.”

You nod, faintly confused.

“In fact, assuming that you ever do have the answers is a sign of ignorance in and of itself.”

You can’t help but think of your best friend when he says that. Kankri and his naive surety, his penchant for chasing windmills. You are all lost, but him more than most, as he doesn’t even know it.

Dusk creeps up on you, and Meenah texts you from outside. You bid Mr. V goodnight, turning your back on room 307D.

One more question lurks at the back of your mind, a question dark as night, attired in gold, with a fondness for fish puns. By acting as if a few weeks ago never happened, you’ve only put off the inevitable, and nobody can help you find the solution to this.

Two days later, while rereading  _Sister Outsider_  for maybe the sixth time, you devise a vague plan that sounds stupid as hell when you contemplate it, and even stupider when you consider implementing it. But, it’s all you can come up with, so…

On Poem in a Pocket Day, you’re all assigned to bring in a work of poetry, and, if called upon, to recite it in front of the entire class.

Miss Levin calls for volunteers, and you raise a reluctant hand a fraction of a second before a few of the others.

“Well, Paw-rim?” she asks expectantly.

You stand up next to your desk, and unfold a printed sheet of paper, swallowing nervously.

“This is a poem titled ‘Call’, written by Audre Lorde.”

Miss Levin nods in approval.

You start to speak with the conviction of a visionary, and the cadence of a waterfall, eyes closed, since you’ve committed long stretches of this to memory.

_“Holy ghost woman / stolen out of your name / Rainbow Serpent / whose faces have been forgotten / Mother, loosen my tongue or adorn me / with a lighter burden / Aido Hwedo is coming…”_

At the surety of your tone, the class descends into a dead hush, so silent you can hear your own breathing. You continue to recite, eyes open now, gaining confidence from the attention, from the way each upturned face regards you singularly.

_“…I am a Black woman turning / mouthing your name as a password / through seductions self-slaughter / and I believe in the holy ghost / mother…”_

These verses are more prayer than poetry, more sacred than secular, and their significance thrums through you like a current, in the careful rise and fall of your voice, in each inflection. You start to sway gently in place.

_“…I am a Black woman stripped down / and praying / my whole life has been an altar / worth its ending…”_

It has, and so it has. In the end, all lives are altars, offerings to something whose name and motivations you can only guess.

This is a rather long poem, but Miss Levin does not cut you off.

She’s always talked about flow and and finding ways to regard the creative arts as an extension of the self, of reaching a point where one interacts with a text on a personal level.

Once, she suggested that all authors have ultimately been nothing but individual voices screaming into a void.

And now you understand.

And you are there.

_“…I may be a weed in the garden / of women I have loved / who are still / trapped in their season / but even they shriek / as they rip burning gold from their skins….”_

You stare tender and tentative at Meenah, seated off to the side of you, as you recite that particular stanza. She reflects the bold intimacy of your gaze measure for measure, eyes locked on yours in a strange sort of stalemate.

She mouths your name slowly, deliberately. Your heart skips a beat.

_“…you are my given fire-tongued / Oya Seboulisa Mawu Afrekete / and now we are mourning our sisters / lost to the false hush of sorrow…”_

You finish the poem, feeling drained for all that you put into your recitation, sitting down with a relieved sigh.

Then Mituna’s up next, lisping his way through “Howl”, which you’re sure he picked solely for its rampant profanity.   
  
During eighth, the time when you and she would ordinarily be passing notes, Meenah’s oddly quiet, surveying her hands and all their golden rings. Some are genuine, and some are not. You’ll never know which are which.

She slides a gold bracelet off her left wrist and passes it to you without a single word. You put it on with equal silence.

Twenty minutes into the period, she asks to go to the bathroom and gives you a significant look on her way out of room 107. She takes her bag with her. Five minutes after that, you tell Ms. Sakamoto that you have a guidance counselor appointment, and abscond from her lecture on infinite series like a bat out of hell.

You find Meenah leaning against a wall in a basement stairwell, blowing bubbles with the two pieces of gum she stole from Kankri during lunch.

“Whale, it cert-fin-ly took you long enough,” she grins.

You laugh, even as you feel suddenly on edge.

She closes the gap between you effortlessly, kissing you with vehemence and possession. She crushes her mouth to yours, wrapping her arms around your waist and pressing you to the tiled wall. Initially you cup her face with equal vigor, but wind up turning the gesture into something gentle, because your heart’s taken up residence in your throat.

She whispers things to you in your common language, sucking bruises into your neck, marking you as hers. But with her bracelet, she has given you a piece of herself, so that she is equally yours.

You think of AP Chemistry, of equilibrium, of reactions that can proceed in either direction, back and forth, back and forth.

She’s nearly got a hand up your dress when the two of you hear footsteps in the stairwell. You jump away from each other as if repelled magnetically. The bell to signal the end of the period goes off.

You spend a long time in the bathroom, knotting and tying your green scarf with care before you make your way to your final class for the day, envying Meenah for being dark enough that such marks don’t show on her body.

For the first time in the history of the universe, you’re actually late for Mr. Vandayar's class. He temporarily stops speaking, surprised. However, he quickly picks up where he left off, neglecting to ask you to explain yourself. You are thankful beyond measure for his oversight.

Mituna notices your misbuttoned dress and strategically tied scarf, and wiggles his eyebrows at you for the rest of the afternoon. He jabs Latula with his elbow and points to you, and she gives you a small, knowing smirk.

You deftly flip them both off while you take notes.

After class, you request clarification on your latest exam grade from Mr. Vandayar, and somehow this turns into a conversation about fracking, which Miss Perez joins with alacrity when she walks into the office.

This is how things tend to go with him, never quite according to plan.

At the end of the afternoon, when he points to your neck and says something like, “careful, Akuba,” you fix the knot on your scarf and blush so hard that it feels like your face is on fire.

Miss Perez puts two and two together and can’t help but tease you.

“Explains why Meenah showed up fifteen minutes late to mock trial, covered in lipstick.”

You wish the ground would open up and swallow you.

It never does.

A week later, Meenah starts getting off at your stop and coming to your house after school, rebraiding your hair while you cook for her. Alone, you two speak a mixture of Akan and English, blending the two languages together without realizing it.

She tells you about Accra and its markets, about the relentless humidity, the bright clothing, and her little sister, Feferi (called Abena), who insisted on trying to swim in the filthy water of Coco beach.

You have not been to the country of your ancestors while you were old enough to remember, so you try to imagine as Meenah describes it.

“When I first got to America, I thought everyone was so pale!” she exclaims.

You laugh. You introduce her to your parents as a friend, and they approve of her enthusiastically, even if she dresses oddly for a young woman. It’s not often that they meet other Ghanaians, much less ones who attend school with you.

She talks with them about her extended family, and it turns out that they all have numerous acquaintances in common. You wonder how much their opinion would change if they knew the full extent of your “friendship”, and conclude that you’d probably be disinherited at best.

You two steal kisses and furtive handfuls of each others bodies in your empty room under the guise of doing homework. You memorize every curve and angle of her, from the springy coils of her unbraided hair down to the tiny bones of her feet.

She rolls you onto your back and unbuttons your dress slowly as if she is unwrapping a gift every single time. Such a stark contrast to her usual brash impatience. With her dark muscular frame, toned from years of swimming, pressed warmly against your own, she reduces you to nerve endings, whispered pleas, and spikes of sensation.

You press insistent kisses to her collarbone while your hands divest her of her sports bra.

Later years and flings would turn you into something of a dominating seductress, but here, fifteen, you know very little about how this works. You are treading deep, unknown waters here, so you put your trust in the one who can swim.

As she kneads your hips, experimentally dipping her fingers into your wetness, you buck forward abruptly and bite down on your upper lip to keep from crying out. She always grins at your undoing, shaking with silent laughter as you quake with something else entirely.

She refers to herself as “stone butch”, tells you that she takes the greatest pleasure from giving pleasure, but allows you to return her favors exactly one time.

In the darkness, with two of your fingers jammed into her, and your tongue - piercing and all - swirling around her clit, she transforms your name from an appellation to an invocation, repeating the syllables until they dissolve into nonsense, rocking desperately against your face.

You never forget the expression of mingled satiation and wonder that crosses her features when she comes.

On the train, in the halls, in public, you two hold hands, but do little else to draw attention to your relationship. Too much lies at stake if people run their mouths, which they always do.

Still, your younger sister, eleven and wise beyond her years, manages to work out the truth. She also has questions for you. But while Kanaya is usually straightforward to a fault, all she does for a few hours is give you the occasional, furtive, cryptic look while you two tend to the garden.

“So, you and Meenah…” she finally begins, straightening the stakes around which the tomatoes will grow.

“Yaaba and I…” you repeat.

“You’re like boyfriend and girlfriend now, right?”

You swear her to a secrecy that she’d already been prepared to maintain, before confirming to her that yes, that is the case. You think that’s the end of the conversation, but she isn’t finished.

There’s something else she wants to know.

“So it’s alright if two girls are like that?” she asks shyly, afraid to look you in the eye.

“It’s perfectly normal. Not as common as, y’know, the other thing, but it happens often enough,” you explain.

“What about God, though? Isn’t it… against his word?”

You’re not sure, really, and you often ask yourself that same question. But you do know this much, which you tell her.

“The most devoted follower of Jesus Christ was herself a prostitute. So I can’t exactly imagine he’d reject anyone based on certain… inclinations.”

“Oh,” she nods, still a little suspicious, but much less nervous.

You paraphrase John 8:7 for her.. “ _Let he who is without sin cast the first stone_ , remember?”

“Right.”

She turns her attention to the weeds threatening the edge of the garden, as do you, at least before your curiosity gets the better of you.

“Is there a particular reason why you wanted to know, Adwoa?”

She wrinkles her nose at the use of this name, currently preferring Kanaya, but answers your question nonetheless.

“There’s a girl in my homeroom,” she starts.

You nod wisely.

“A girl in your homeroom…” you repeat, poking a little fun at her nervous tone. She sticks her tongue out at you before continuing.

Kanaya goes on, “and she’s really, quite pretty…”

Your parents have apparently won some sort of genetic lottery. Two daughters and neither of them are heterosexual. You will support your sister to the ends of the earth, though.

Your secrets stay concealed behind the other’s lips.

As AP exams draw closer, there isn’t as much time to spend with Meenah bent over you in the low light of either of your bedrooms. Even with your hands entwined, you two flip through index cards, quizzing each other on redox reactions and the laws of thermodynamics.

Into the late night, she rereads the material assigned for the Spanish Lit exam feverishly, falling asleep on her printout of  _“Las Medias Rojas”_. Her twin braids tumble forward onto her desk, with an unbroken line of drool dangling between her mouth and the paper.

You still stay late after school in the history office, helping Mr. Vandayar and Miss Perez. The former tells you that you look more sleep deprived than Mr. Cao, your physics teacher, a man with perpetual bags under his eyes. You tell him that he seems more nervous about the AP US History exam than his students do.

“Well, your marks are a reflection on my ability to teach,” he says.

Miss Perez snorts.

“Yeah and when all the sections of your classes make fours and fives, you always kick yourself for having gotten so wound up.”

Mr. Vandayar rolls his eyes. “Who knows? This could be the year someone gets a one.”

“You  _are_  teaching Cronus Ampora,” you joke.

He chokes on his coffee from laughing, and wipes his mouth.

“I really shouldn’t have found that funny.”

You like it when he laughs. You like it when he smiles. When he gets concerned about you and touches your shoulder briefly, the point of contact tingles. You wish you were older, like Perez's age, and on the same side of the desk as Mr. V.

Instead, you’re a teenage girl with box braids and four rings in your face. And even if he admires your intellect, he will never see you that way. And even if Meenah’s penchant for breaking the rules has begun to rub off on you, there are certain lines that cannot be crossed.

Meenah still teases you about this. You tease her about Miss Perez. So it goes.

AP exams pass in a caffeinated blur. You, Meenah, Latula, Mituna, and Kankri fall asleep on each other in their aftermath, forming a small cuddle pile in the basement.

In June, you give your final presentation and hand in an associated paper for US History on womanism, and break an unspoken record. For the first time during his tenure as a teacher, Mr. Vandayar gives a student assignment the grade of a hundred.

After stressing yourselves to the edge of nervous breakdowns over AP tests and final projects, all of you take your regents exams like old pros.

Aranea becomes the talk of the department for writing twenty pages on one of her essays for the English regents. Mituna gets a perfect score on the Physics regents. Kankri runs down the hallway powered on the force of sheer jubilance when he finds out that he made a sixty-seven on Math B.

“Trig’s dragging down my overall, though,” he complains later.

“Who gives a glubbin’ shit?” Meenah asks. “At least you passed this time around.”

“Colleges are going to judge me for that grade, and for my previous failure in sophomore year,” he says gravely.

Meenah shrugs, claps him on the back. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Cranky. I’m shore that with time, they’ll come up with e-fin betta reasons to judge you.”

“That isn’t comforting in the slightest.”

She gives him one of her famous “like I give a flying fuck” stares in response.

On Mr. Vandayar's recommendation, you and Kankri take a class on sociology at Columbia University over the summer. After the first three weeks, you contemplate begging Horuss to build you a time machine so you can go back in time and assassinate Foucault.

Kankri reads up on this dude like he’s God and learns even more dense jargon to add to his ramblings.

One lazy Saturday, you, he, and Meenah sit sipping cold hibiscus tea in your garden. He’s been lecturing for like two hours. Meenah does the noble thing and politely asks him to shut the fuck up.

When AP scores come out, you think of Mr. V and his lessons and wonder how his doctoral thesis is going. You chide yourself for thinking about Mr. Vandayar, and being slightly sad that he won’t be your teacher come September. You’ll have Miss Perez for AP Gov.

Meenah manages to get fives on her three APs. She whispers to you about how she’s scared about college applications anyway. Her overall is only an 86. She doesn’t write as well as other people she knows.

You do your best to reassure her.

“You’ll get into a good school, I know it.”

She shakes her head bitterly, fear having given way to anger. “Shore, easy as shell for you to say, miss valedictorian. Schools’re gonna be fighting over you like hungry fish.”

Unlike her, though, whose family is loaded, it won’t be enough for you just to be accepted into school. You’ll need a full scholarship. This weighs heavily on your mind for the rest of break.

Cronus throws a raucous end-of-summer party that everyone attends but nobody remembers. Based on the few grainy pictures that various inebriated people have managed to preserve on their phones, it’s probably better that way.

The first day of senior year is one you’ll never forget. You and Meenah have four classes in common. You and Kankri have a free and gov together.

In fact you, Latula, Kankri, Mituna, and Meenah, all have third free, which you spend in the courtyard, sitting on the senior benches like gods. Latula dubs your group the third period squad.

Kankri launches into one of his usual speeches, this particular one focused on how dehumanizing the college process is. That has to be the first time you agree with every word he says.

As he speaks, he gains volume, and his hands shake with frustration.

“We are so much more than letters and numbers, than points on a scattergram,” he shouts. “We are human beings!”

“Right fuckin’ on!” Mituna yells.

The two of them start up a chant of  _“Fuck naviance! Fuck college confidential! Fuck this system!”_

At first, it’s just them. Then, Latula joins in. One hand holding Meenah’s and the other holding Kankri’s, you also start shouting. Other seniors involve themselves, and then other upperclassmen, until most of the courtyard’s been swept up in this act of rebellion.

The commotion grows loud enough that people in the courtyard-facing classrooms start showing up at the windows to watch. Mr. V comes to the window of room 305, gazing down in bewilderment. He locks eyes with Kankri.

Expression deadpan, he raises his fist in silent salute. Kankri lets go of your hand to return the gesture.

When the deans start rounding people up, you throw yourself in front of Kankri, insist that you were an instigator, and that he merely got caught in the crossfire. Kankri ends up getting fifty detentions and an in-house suspension anyway. You just get detentions.

The asskicking you receive from your parents still nearly kills you, particularly the one from your mother.

_“You are supposed to keep your head in your books and learn. Some girls cannot even go to school, and you have the audacity to complain about your education? How dare you!”_

Miss Perez can’t fix the fact that you’ve earned twenty detentions and Kankri has earned fifty, although she is also dean. She can’t override your punishment without getting herself in trouble, as she tells you in the office after school.

She finds a different way of expressing her feelings toward your actions.

Two days later, you check your grades and find that you have a 103 in her class while Kankri has a 115, the points attributed to extra credit on your summer assignment, which she hasn’t even collected yet. During class, she smiles at the pair of you.

“Not bad, Vantas,” she tells Kankri after class.

“The path of those who would challenge the status quo is not an easy one,” Mr. V says to you the next week, while you and he work on organizing the book room. You should be in detention, but you figure you can skip a day every now and then.

“Don’t care,” you reply. “Someone has to do it.”

He hefts a pile of global studies textbooks onto the nearest shelf. “You sound exactly the way I did at seventeen. I thought I could change everything.”

He tells you about the first time he read Bayard Rustin, how it felt like a religious experience. Someone who understood, who knew these same axes of oppression as lived realities, not just impersonal theory. Praxis, for the first time.

He talks about how it helped him come to terms with certain aspects of his identity.

In the wake of realizing his sexual orientation, he apparently ended up dating his college roommate for a while. They even went to the teachers’ college together, although their fields were very different, and the roommate was a year above him.

“He must have been into activism like you, right?” you ask.

Mr. V shakes his head.

“On the contrary, he kept telling me to stop rocking the boat before I either got arrested or expelled. Still does, even now, and it’s been a few years since we stopped seeing each other.”

“So you still keep in touch, then?”

“It’s kind of unavoidable, when we teach at the same school.”

You spend a few seconds working out who this old flame must be, and then goggle at him in abject shock.

“Mr. Cao? You and him…?”

“College was an interesting experience,” he chuckles, eyes glinting with a hint of mischief. “Nothing quite like getting bailed out of jail by a lisping physics grad student. And then getting cursed at in Canto all the way back to the dorms.”

“Man, I  _knew_  they were gay for each other,” Meenah remarks when you quietly reveal this piece of information to her on the 4 train platform.

“Well, we can’t all have gaydar as flawless as yours.”

It’s interesting to know this now, seeing as Vandayar is the Mr. C's favorite person to whine about.

Venting to you after AP Physics has become something of a routine with him. You don’t particularly mind, since his eternal sarcasm amuses you, even if his nickname for you - Popo - annoys the shit out of you. You remind him of Ms. Martineau, of Dolomom, he’s told you, although you disagree with this. You could never be as patient as she is, and you have zero desire to become a guidance counselor.

“If Kankri is a rebel without a cauthe…” he mutters, fingers dancing across the keypad of his phone while he plays tetris, “then Krishna is a rebel without a clue.”

It’s hard to believe that they ever dated, for all that Mr. Cao seems to deplore him. There’s literally only one member of the faculty that he appears to despise more.

“For someone with such antagonism toward rule-breakers, you sure do hate vice principal Perlman, though,” you respond.

“Thethily cut my department’th funding and routinely dithrepectth me,” he informs you. “And I don’t hate rule breakerth, for the record. I jutht think they’re idiotth.”

You sigh deeply, gathering up your physics notes in your arms. “That’s only your opinion.”

“It may only be my opinion, but notithe how motht of thethe revolutionarieth and rebelth have either ended up jailed or shot,” he points out. “You might dithagree with what I think, but keeping your head down ith alwayth the thafetht way to go.”

“I guess. Though it’s been said that those who desire security over freedom deserve neither,” you return.

He rolls his eyes and spins in his swivel chair so that his back is to you.

“For the love of god, Maryam, you’re the motht likely candidate for valedictorian and have a hundred in my clathth. Uthe your fucking brain for onthe, I know you have one.”

The golden leaves of fall give way to the frigidity of Bronx winter, and the only thing anyone can talk about is college. Supplemental essays, recommendations, early decision, early action. Your life loses its old radical dimensions and turns into a race toward all green triangles on your common app.

Needing one humanities teacher and one science or math teacher to write your college recs, you approach Mr. Cao (who also had you for honors physics last year) and, of course, Mr. Vandayar. Both agree without hesitation.

“Yeah, yeah, Popo,” Mr. C replies, glancing at the pre-addressed envelopes you’ve given him. “I’ll leave out the partth about your firtht day of thchool exploitth.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He reads over the envelopes more closely, commenting on a few of the schools you’ve chosen.

“Applying to Barnard, I thee,” he grins. “No doubt tho you can thtare at all the girlth.”

 _Barnard, Columbia, Dartmouth, Macaulay Honors at Hunter, Stony Brook, New Paltz, and York._  Seven schools. Six supplements. Twelve recommendations. There’s never enough time for anything anymore. You fall asleep in class and have nightmares about rejection letters.

Mituna applies early action to MIT and gets waitlisted. Latula comforts him about this, acting sad along with him, but expressing different sentiments to you in the locker room.

“I’m actually kind of hoping that he doesn’t get in. I didn’t apply there, and I don’t wanna go to college without him, you know?” she asks. “Does that make me a bad girlfriend?”

“Nope,” you reassure her. “It makes you human.”

You know Meenah’s also hoping you somehow get rejected from your more selective schools. It irked you at first, drove a wedge between you two for a bit, but you can kind of understand it now.

“Listen, I’m sorry for what I said before. I want you to get into Columbia. I reely do,” she tells you in detention that week.

“Meenah, it’s okay,” you reply. “I dunno if I want to go to college without you either.”

She promises to support you wherever you decide to go. And that means everything to you, her change of heart. Watching the bracelet she gave you glint in the light of your desk lamp and feeling your heart leap while you do your calculus homework, you wonder if this is what love feels like. If this was how your parents felt when they got married.

In class, seeing Meenah strut around wearing a turtleneck under a tank top that reads  _“I flexed so hard the sleeves fell off”_ , you smile. Sitting next to her in physics, holding her hand under the table, you smile.

If your parents aren’t home when she decides to come over, you two kiss in your kitchen while you prepare dinner. Every once in a while, Kanaya walks in on this and pretends to have seen nothing.

For once in his life, Kankri is quiet, doing his own mad scramble with the ten colleges he’s applying to. You serve your detentions from the first day of class together and whisper about application essay strategies.

Through three feet of snow, you trudge the distance between the train station and school with shivering resignation toward the roaring wind.

Mituna improvises a snowboard out of his AP Java textbook and spends his lunch periods attempting legendarily radical moves and narrowly averting concussing himself in the process.

While Meenah waits outside for you and the train after swim practice, her hair freezes in the gathering blizzard. At your house, you heat up a bowl of soup for her, and survey her soaked garments with disdain as she shivers in her seat.

“You’re gonna get sick if you stay in those wet things.”

“You just want me to get naked,” she says.

You toss her one of your sweaters, a pair of underwear and a bathrobe, putting her clothes in the dryer. It’s a testament to your mutual exhaustion this time around that you don’t take advantage of the fact that your house is empty.

All of third period crew buys each other Christmas gifts. From Latula, you get an Anatomy and Physiology textbook, since her mother is a nurse practitioner and Latula knows that you also want to go into nursing. From Mituna, you get a DVD containing three hours of lesbian porn. From Meenah, you receive a jade green skirt and a gold ring, which you put on your index finger as soon as you get it. Kankri gets you a book by Alice Walker, and you two argue on the train ride home, as usual.

“And I, oppressed, who have somehow thrived in the ghetto an—”

You cut him off. “The ghetto, Kanny? You’ve lived in Park Slope your entire life.”

Mituna laughs so hard that he bangs his head on a subway pole, and keeps laughing anyway.

Instead of going to Cronus’s party, you spend New Year’s at Meenah’s house, watching the ball drop on ABC. You start making out at 11:55, and it’s 12:20 by the time you two finally let go of each other.

“Shit, it’s 2007,” she says, breathless.

“Been 2007 for twenty minutes now, apparently,” you manage.

She resumes kissing you, with a whispered, “Happy New Year to me.”

Despite all the bitching and moaning Kankri did about the red sweater you knitted him as a Christmas gift, he ends up wearing it to school on the first day back. You point this out to him and he insists that it’s only because it’s eight degrees outside.

January gives way to February.

The day second semester begins, they announce the students ranked first and second for the graduating class of 2007. Aranea is salutatorian, and you are valedictorian.

Latula groans. “If Serket’s salutatorian, she’s gonna have to give a speech. And you know that shit’s gonna be like four hours long.”

“Fuck it, I’m bringing a pillow to graduation,” Meenah comments.

Mr. V congratulates you in the history office after class.

“I just knew you’d get it,” he remarks. “Certainly, you deserve this.”

You can’t think of anything to say, so you just nod.

February gives way to March.

College decisions start coming out, but not many. None of the decisions you’re really waiting on, anyway.

March gives way to March 13th, and you buy Meenah a tyrian purple men’s dress shirt for her birthday. In typical Meenah fashion, she strips down to her bra and puts the shirt on as soon as you give it to her in the hall.

“Your average might be a B, but gurl, you got them double D’s,” Mituna says, twitching and winking at her.

Meenah punches him into a locker.

When April decisions finally arrive, it turns out that you’ve been accepted to all the schools to which you’d applied.

“If you don’t go to Columbia, I’ll shoot you,” Meenah says.

Mr. Cao high fives you when you walk into his class. Mituna walks into physics forty minutes late, having decided to celebrate his acceptance into Cooper Union’s school of engineering by getting plastered on Old English 800. Mr. Cao attempts to high five him, a gesture that Mituna misses.

“Thorry man, thereth like… two of you,” Mituna replies, trying to high five him and managing to miss a second time.

Mr. Cao sighs and returns to his lesson.

“I’d give you detentionth but I pity the dean who hath to deal with you,” he says. “Popo, make thure he doethnt fall down the thtairth today.”

Drunk, Mituna stumbles around for the rest of the day shouting, “Second term WHAT?!”

At the end, after all is said and done, you decide to attend the same school as the rest of your friends. You could have gone Ivy, but you don’t want to be without everyone, and this way, you’ll be able to go to college for free.

You don’t have anything for Poem in a Pocket Day this year, but Meenah does. During lit, she recites “i carry your heart” with her eyes noticeably glued to you the entire time.

_“…here is the deepest secret nobody knows…”_

You start to cry. Slow, quiet tears that descend down your face and into your notes.

_“…and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart…”_

You don’t regret having to re-apply your eyeliner between classes, or feeling spacey for the rest of the day.

In May, AP exams fly by through an adderall-fueled haze. Kankri lapses into unconsciousness on the train after gov, having been awake for sixty hours by that point. You have to shake him roughly to rouse him at Bergen St, because he is absolutely dead to the world by then.

With money you’ve saved from your part time job at the grocery store a block away from your house, you buy yourself a ticket and dress for prom.

The drama of who’s taking whom to prom is infinitely more interesting to contemplate than final projects or writing your graduation speech.

Meenah gets down on one knee during physics to ask you to go with her, while Mr. C yells at the both of you for interrupting his class. Lost for words, you accept by nodding. Mituna doesn’t have to ask Latula; it’s already a foregone conclusion.

Cronus asks Kankri to prom, and he says yes. You react fairly well to this, all things considered.

“If he does  _anything_  to you, I’m murdering him with my handbag, Kanny.”

The last official day of classes ends. You and Kankri count regents exams in the history department office, on Mr. V's instruction. Today, there are no debates. Just silence.

“I believe that you may have been the most informative teacher I’ve had in my entire history of academic instruction,” Kankri finally says.

“That’s Kanny-speak for ‘you’re cool’,” you tell the older man. He laughs.

“You two have certainly been my most thoughtful students,” he reflects. The late afternoon sunshine streams in through the window. The echo of joyous voices drifts up from the courtyard.

Days later, you’re halfway through styling your hair for prom when you start to think about the last four years of your life. How much you’ve changed since 2003. You gather most of your hair into an upsweep, but let some of the meticulously set curls hang.

You apply your makeup with an air of introspection, smiling at Kanaya, who stands in your doorway to watch you.

“You look like just a princess, Akuba,” she whispers, awestruck.

“One day, you will, too.”

“What time’s Meenah coming for you?”

“She isn’t.”

That surprises your little sister, at least until you explain to her that your parents would ask too many questions if Meenah came to pick you up.

“Kankri and I are pretending to be each other’s dates, just for our families.”

“Oh, makes sense, then.”

When he comes to pick you up, your mother fusses over you. She gushes about how wonderful the both of you look, how happy she is to see two young people getting ready to go enjoy themselves. Between when Kankri gets to your house and the arrival of the limo that your friends have booked, she takes about a thousand pictures of you two.

She sets you in different poses in between photos.

“Now, a kiss for the camera!” she insists.

Your mother’s enthusiasm is mildly embarrassing, but you do look fine as hell in your upsweep and your jade green gown, so it isn’t a complete waste.

You and Kankri gaze at each other with fleeting distaste before deciding to humor her. He takes you into his arms and kisses you with surprising passion.

“God, that was awful,” you mutter, once you and he are out of earshot. “Good show, though, Kanny. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

He wipes his mouth. “It wasn’t too hard. You looked a bit like Latula from that angle.”

The limousine pulls up to the corner near your house, black and containing the remainder of the third period crew. Although you feel bad that Kankri isn’t riding with his real date, you’re fairly happy to not be sharing a vehicle with Cronus.

Meenah, dapper and dashing, wears a close-fitting dark suit, a white dress shirt, and a tyrian purple tie. While her two braids hang like usual, she’s slicked the rest of her hair back.

She jabs Kankri in the shoulder with her thumb. “How’d the great farce go, Cranky?”

“About as well as could be expected, considering the inordinate number of photographs that Porrim’s mother insisted on taking of us, and all the ludicrous posing. I do believe I’ve been summarily blinded by the flash on that ghastly camera.”

“You coulda just said it sucked, dude,” Meenah replies.

She gazes you over and nods appreciatively.

“You’re gorgeous, like always.”

“And you are as handsome as ever,” you respond.

“Hot damn, I’m surrounded by hot people!” Mituna exclaims. Everyone laughs.

“No pimp cane?” you ask Meenah, grinning.

Meenah shakes her head, dejected.

“Couldn’t find one befittin’ of ma status on such short notice, ya get? Not for lack of tryin, tho.”

She pulls out your corsage from under her seat, visibly annoyed, but places it around your wrist anyway.

“I tried to find a glubbin’ sunflower one just for you, but no dice. So I fin-ally copped this lameass rose thing instead.”

You think it’s perfectly beautiful, and affix a boutonniere to her lapel in turn. She straightens out her jacket and smiles.

“See, my g-frond has good taste in flowers,” she brags.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, the limousine contains a sunroof. Mituna quickly figures out how to open it and spends a good portion of the drive with his head and shoulders out the window, screaming curses into the June evening.

“Third period crew repre-fuckin-sent!” He shouts into the open air, as the limo does 65 down the highway. “Who is teh winrars? We are teh goddamned winrars!”

Latula yanks him back inside by the back of his suit jacket before he goes flying out into the night. Meenah yells for him to do it again.

You groan at your friends and close the sunroof, mortified, but not surprised.

The ride gets even better when Kankri decides to go on a lecture on how prom is inherently oppressive, bigoted, triggering, and patriarchal in nature. Mituna blows raspberries to accompany this rant. Meenah rolls her eyes.

“Hold the fuck up as I, a woman, patriarch the fuck outta my female date.” she says, snaking an arm around your waist. “Feelin’ the oppression yet?”

You snort-laugh and lean into her touch. Latula cackles.

Prom continues to be an amusing affair.

Cronus, sadly seated at your table, compliments your appearance while he leers at your cleavage. Meenah calmly threatens to break both of his legs and beat him to death with her water glass. You insist to her that you are perfectly capable of kicking his ass yourself.

Although you spend most of your time dancing with Meenah, you manage to get a dance in with each of your friends. At some point, Mituna brings out a giant water bottle full of vodka that he managed to sneak past the chaperones and pours each of you a few shots.

Mr. V and Mr. C dance to one of the slower songs and pretend (badly) to be irked about it.

Aranea waltzes with you with surprising competence, while Meenah and Latula dance together. When Kankri and Latula dance with each other, you and Meenah point and laugh at the expression of absolute joy on his face.

“Dunno how he thinks that crush is a secret,” she comments.

“I guess he figures it must be well-concealed as long as he hasn’t given one of his lectures about it.”

Mituna’s sense of timing and rhythm is atrocious, so he consequently spends most of the dance you two share stepping on your feet.

You find Mr. V alone in the crowd toward the end of the night. He smiles at you, and you melt.

“You look beautiful,” he says.

In reply, you stammer words of gratitude, staring at him a little awkwardly until you find your voice. Steeling yourself, gathering up courage, you think “now or never” over and over.

“Wanna dance?” you ask.

“It would be my pleasure.”

With one of his hands holding yours, and the other around your waist, the two of you turn and sway to a slow song. You think of poetry while your heart hammers in your ears, something from Walt Whitman like,  _“i sing the body electric_ ”, or Audre Lorde - as he holds you chastely - one of her verses that mentions,  _“the safety of separations”._

You’re close enough that you can smell his cologne.

He’s a good dancer, better than you, and you’re content to let him lead. In your heels, you’re an inch or two taller, but still roughly at eye level. You hope he doesn’t notice your blushing, although you have an awful track record with this. If he does notice, his expression never changes for it. 

When the song is over, he kisses you on the cheek and bids you a good evening. You stumble back to your table, just a little dizzy, and fight the slight urge to cry.

The night ends.

The week ends.

During the graduation ceremony, seated on the stage with the rest of the national honor society, a sea of green-clad seniors in white cowls, you mentally review what you plan to say.

Aranea’s speech is so long that you’ve zoned out by the time they call your name.

_“Porrim?”_

You had planned not to rise unless they called you Akuba, but, shocked, you make your way to the podium nevertheless.

You give your graduation speech with the composed air of someone who has practiced this a hundred times beforehand, barely looking down at the paper as you speak.

It’s a load of articulately phrased meaningless bullshit in your opinion, but it’s adequate for the circumstances, you suppose.

For most of the recitation, you just want to be done. You’re in your body but not, the thousand or so eyes on you making you nervous and dissociative. You’ve reached the final paragraph when you decide to pause, seemingly for emphasis. The administration had approved the tripe you read, and thinking it over, you still have one final “fuck you” to administer.

You toss aside the remainder of your speech.

You give a conclusion that you improvise on the spot, words teeming with passion and intent for the first time.

_“….and while we once entered high school as a group of freshmen, we now leave as individuals, our futures unclear. Cognizant of those who have come before us, of the all broken systems we have encountered over the years, including this one, we must strive to make this unjust world a better place in whatever ways we can. We must also be mindful of our methodologies, remembering, as Audre Lorde once said, that ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.’”_

With the echo of your last sentence ringing into the theater, you bow and take your seat before anyone has the chance to react.

You locate the faces of third period crew in the shocked silence of the crowd.

Kankri’s mouth is open wide enough to catch flies, at least until he catches your eye and grins weakly. Meenah mouths the word “kickass” at you. Latula gives you a thumbs up sign. Mituna, who is seated on the stage with you as part of the national honor society, almost rises and walks over to high five you before remembering he probably isn’t supposed to do that.

Your search the line of black-robed faculty, until you finally find Mr. Vandayar, who wears the cowl of his own alma mater. He doesn’t clap or smile. Instead, he makes a brief fist and nods, eyes gleaming with pride.

That makes everything worth it.

Mr. Cao stands next to him, shaking his head at the both of you.

After the ceremony, Mituna gives you a proper high five, and wonders rather loudly whether they can give you detentions after you’ve technically graduated.

“Maybe they’ll withhold my diploma or something,” you muse. “After all, they only gave us the cases today.”

“Nah, I think they’ll prolly just wanna get rid a’ your ass,” Meenah figures.

The absolute last day of school is a whirlwind of final transcripts and last minute attempts to get teachers to sign autograph books.

Your guidance counselor until the end, Ms. Martineau gives you your diploma with kind words and a hug. You mop the tears from your eyes, thank her profusely, and move out of the way so the next person in line can receive their graduation materials.

Wandering the first floor, you, Mituna, and Meenah briefly crash Mr. C's room on this final day of senior year. By the time he realizes who’s come to see him, it’s too late to try to lock you out.

Coffee in hand, and migraine close behind, he kneads his head at the terrible trio you comprise, murmuring things about unrepentant troublemakers who need to get their brains examined for the good of humanity.

“You know you love uth,” Mituna insists, giving the man puppy dog eyes.

“Tho much love,” Mr. Cao deadpans. “I have never been thith happy to thee three thudenth graduate in my entire exithtenthe. Fly, fly free, and don’t look back. Pleathe, god.”

For all his snide commentary, he ends up fist bumping each of you, giving a rare smile when Mituna comes back for seconds.

“So congratu-fuckin-lationth on being thomeone eltheth problemth now,” he continues. “I thwear, I’m gonna call in thick on homecoming. Or better yet, call in dead.”

“Aw, shore-ly you don’t reely hate us that much,” Meenah pouts.

Reluctantly, he shakes his head.

“Nah,” he admits. “I hate the idiot up in three-oh-five for giving all of you thtupid ideath even worthe. I’d try punching him, but I already did that in grad thchool, tho now it’d just be redundant ath hell. ”

Mituna points out that he was personally perfectly capable of doing stupid things without any outside influence whatsoever.

Meenah reminds Mr. Cao that she’d been ignoring rules consistently since freshman year, before she’d ever known about Mr. Vandayar, and that she never actually had him as a teacher.

"Dude had no influence on me, yo."

Everyone turns to look at you, then.

Mr. Cao mutters things about “the idealistic dipshit on the third floor and the even stupider student who took every single word he said as truth”.

Weary of his incessant bitching after the first five minutes, you finally let loose and say what you’d been thinking for the entirety of the two years he taught you. You call him a cynical asshole to his face, and as an afterthought, add “pompous jaded bastard” to the list.

Nobody says anything for at least thirty agonizing seconds. Your hands fly over your mouth and you just know that you have  _gone too far_.

But just when you’re convinced that he’s going to retroactively fail you, Mr. Cao lets out a dry, wheezing laugh, evidently amused as hell at your newfound temerity. Each time he seems like he might be finished, he dissolves into yet another fit of uncontrollable cackling.

Everyone who warned you was right. This man is completely and totally out of his mind.

“You know what, Popo? If you guyth do thucceed in tharting a revolution, I’ll be the firtht dumbathth in your army.”

“I will hold you to that promise, sir,” you return with exaggerated seriousness.

Standing ramrod straight at his desk, he gives you a halfassed salute.

“Right then, Lieutenant Major Maryam. Take the retht of the idiot platoon and get the fuck out of my room. I have work to do.”

You roll your eyes.

“You’re going to lock the door and play tetris on your phone for the next two hours.”

“Work. To. Do.”

Mituna goes back downstairs to hug Ms. Martineau again. Everything done in twos. Kankri goes to express his gratitude toward Ms. Sakamoto for passing him. Meenah goes hunting for Miss Perez, presumably to either hug her or hit on her.

Latula decides to find Miss Levin and thank her for everything. You wind your way up the two flights of stairs to room 305, where Mr. Vandayar stares out the window at the throngs of jubilant students.

He’s so focused on the display outside that your entrance takes him slightly by surprise, though not much.

“At long last, Akuba,” he says, turning to you. “How does it feel to be a graduate?”

“Hasn’t hit me yet,” you confess. “I’m sure it will after I have enough jello shots at Cronus’s party.”

A chuckle from him, at that.

You take your autograph book out of your folder, and hand it to him carefully. “I was wondering if you could…”

“Naturally.”

He picks a pen gingerly out of the cup on his desk and starts to write. His penmanship is small, looping and deliberate as always. You won’t look his message over then and there. You’ll wait until you’re out of his sight.

You hand him a box of hibiscus tea, and a letter of your own, one you stayed up half of last night writing.

“Forgive me if I don’t read it right this second, would you?” he asks. “I have something to give you.”

He removes a battered book from the messenger bag on his chair, and passes it to you.

“I was assigned this as reading when I was just a bit older than you are now. And I figure that since I’ve memorized it, I should pass it on to someone who would appreciate it.”

You read the tattered cover.  _Pedagogy of the Oppressed_ , by Paulo Freire.

It’s a book you could find anywhere for a few bucks, and this particular copy is falling apart at the seams, but it means the world to you. You place it into your bag.

And in a fit of impulse, you embrace him tightly, putting all your faint sadness and yearning into the gesture. He returns your hug, patting you gently on the back, waiting for you to let go before pulling away.

The confession - which you dared not put even into the letter - lies on the tip of your tongue.

You can tell him now, and even if he rebuffs you, it will be of no real consequence. This is the last time you’ll ever stand in his presence as a student. You never have to see him again.

Fifteen year old Porrim, bold and impulsive, would have done it without a second thought, but you’re not that little junior anymore. You’re poised on the edge of seventeen now, and you have learned how to choose your words wisely.

It’s not worth ruining a friendship over a childish urge. Some things are better left unsaid.

“Thank you, sir,” you whisper instead, tears coursing freely down your face. Your makeup is ruined.

He hands you a tissue from his desk.

“Anytime.”

Kankri comes to collect you a few moments later, expounding on how Meenah, Latula, and the rest of third period squad has been looking for you for at least the last ten minutes.

He’s also come for one final debate with his favorite teacher.

When they’re done arguing, Mr. Vandayar scrawls a message in his autograph book, and wishes him the best of luck in college. You and Kankri get ready to leave, but at the last second, he stops to look around the classroom. This was the place where you learned everything, after all.

“Damn,” Kankri whispers, the finality of today having hit him like a brick.

“When you’re out there in the real world,” your former teacher tells the two of you, “don’t accept things the way they are. Give them hell.”

“On it, boss,” you grin.

“Oh, we will,” Kankri says.

The rest of your crew finds you in a third floor hallway, Mituna midway through cracking a perverted joke when he notices Kankri. This does not stop him in the least; in fact, he starts the joke from the beginning so that Kankri can appreciate the entire thing. For his part, Kankri expresses disdain and offense in the most prolix way possible, while Latula and Meenah exchange exasperated glances.

You linger several paces behind the brewing fight, wishing to remain uninvolved. Meenah drops back, so as to keep pace with you. She interlaces your hands, her rings cool in contrast to the warmth of her grip.

“So how’d the talk with your man go?” she asks. “Any final confishions of undyin’ love?”

You roll your eyes.

“No. And he’s not my man,” you insist.

“Dam strait,” Meenah agrees. “Otherwise I’d havta fight him. Y’know, for your honor and whatnot.”

“For my honor and whatnot,” you repeat sarcastically.

She presses a kiss to your temple. “Aw, shell, you know I’m just messin’ around.”

“You are incorrigible.”

“I heard encouragable.”

Kankri, Mituna, and Latula decide to ride home in the latter’s car. You and Meenah elect to take the long subway ride from Bedford Park to Crown Heights one final time.

“See ya at Cronus’s thing, I guess,” Latula says to the pair of you.

“Yeah, word. Good luck gettin’ Cranky and Tuna to not kill each other,” Meenah replies.

Meenah kicks two sophomores out of her favorite seat at the corner of the first car with a single glare and a terse “what the coddamn fuck”. You think about admonishing her and decide against it. It’s your last ride, ever. You’ve earned this spot.

The taller girl curls up against you, mouth on your neck. She nibbles on your earlobe, teeth grazing the golden post set through it. Sometimes, during lazy moments like these, you forget where she ends and you begin. It’s similar to the way that you two can switch from speaking Akan to English seamlessly.

You blur together without noticing.

With the train in motion, you start singing to her, Roberta Flack’s  _Killing Me Softly_. It’s bittersweet, so it fits this last day mood. It also reminds you of another person, but you put him out of your mind. That is your past, a piece of juvenilia now.

Your present is wrapped up in your arms, brash, irreverent, and bedecked in gold.

“I love you, you know that?” she murmurs against you. You gaze at her with faint surprise.

Sure, you’ve been dating since last April, so this revelation should be completely obvious. But she’s never said it until now. The words and their implications stick lead-heavy in your mind.

Love, you think. Love. Hearing her say it is like exhaling a breath you never knew you were holding. You run a gentle hand down her face, your heart doing strange things within your chest.

“I love you too.” And you mean it, without reservations.

You think of the old poem you once recited for her, verses coming to memory easily. You don’t speak them, though you do think them.

_“…we are learning by heart / what has never been taught…”_

“Buoy, you alwaves look so mothaglubbin serious,” she comments, playing with your braids.

You contemplate how one moment in junior English has led you to this moment, where you hold Meenah in a familiar embrace. You have memorized every inch of her skin, and you are so close, the way you are frequently so close, the idea of such easy intimacy both exhilarating and terrifying.

_“…in my throat / the holy ghosts linguist / one iron silence broken…”_

You do not know what later moments will bring, nor what college has in store for you. So many unknowns. Nothing is certain anymore.

The weight of the future bears down on you, but you feel feather-light, here in the present moment, bare thighs sticking to the blue plastic seat.

_“…Mother, loosen my tongue / or adorn me / with a lighter burden…”_

“Someone reely oughta give you a lesson on loosenin’ tha fuck up.”

Meenah bops you gently on the nose with her index finger. You smile, insisting that your seriousness balances out her irreverence. She scoffs. The eternal argument bounces on. The train hurtles underground.

_“…Aido Hwedo is coming…”_

You are two individuals, who belong to themselves, and yet to each other. Back and forth, the ebb and flow, like waves on the sea.

_“…Aido Hwedo is coming…”_


End file.
